Cutting down a Christmas Tree.

This year we decided to finally make a trip to Apple Hill and cut down a Christmas tree. If you have never heard of Apple Hill, well you should have, it is this amazing area East of Sacramento. It's an area that has numerous orchard, shops, and Christmas tree lots. In the last 1o years that we have been in Northern California, we have never made the trip to Apple Hill. Boy, have we been missing out on some fun. One of the best part of the trip for me was stopping at a farmers market and having some apple donuts and apple cider. The donuts were so crispy with a cinnamon and sugar coating. I have never had a donut so good before in my life. We also picked up some apple upon Tyler's persistent request and they were also the best apples I have ever had. We decided that we needed to make more trips to this destination.

We went to a pretty big Christmas tree farm and thought it was going to be great because we could spend time picking out the "perfect" Christmas tree. Little did we know how overwhelming it was to actually pick one out. The more we looked, the more overwhelming it became to the point we could not remember where all the trees were that we liked.

Tyler was in his element on this farm. He leaded us in between the thickest trees and when we struggled to get by some of the trees, he would laugh because he was small and had no trouble. He especially liked when we encountered a very muddy spot. When he saw a stump where a tree had been cut down or some dead branches, he would get sad and say, "Awww," because he thought they were hurt.
Tyler became tired from all the walking so he decided to take a rest and play in the mud.
We finally settled on a tree that we liked and had it cut down and taken to the front of the lot. We had no idea how heavy this tree was until we got it home and Eric had to trim the bottom and get the tree into the house. We should have had some clue when earlier the tree broke the chain on the machine that was trying to wrap it up at the farm.
This is the tree stuck while they were repairing the chain. It did not look that big to us while it was around all the other Christmas trees.

We also realized that this was the fattest tree we ever had when it took up almost the entire width of our wall in our living room. We were so concerned about the height of the tree when we were picking it out that we did not figure in the width of it. Thank goodness it fit.It sure did smell good.

Days in Passing.

Lately our family has been extremely busy hence why I have not been blogging in 3 months. We have had some very sick family members that we have been feverishly praying for, finals for Eric, work for Kelly, and growing up for Tyler. Through all of this mentally and emotionally exhausting last couple of months, we have also had some great adventures.

One fun project that Eric recently completed was the concrete for our shed out side our house. The best part of it all was the arrival of the huge cement truck. Tyler thought this was the greatest present to show up in front of this house. Sadly he realized that this nice truck had to say goodbye, but the reaction on his face when he saw this truck was beyond words. Eric learned a very important lesson with this project: It is cheaper to just buy your own cement mixer than to rent a truck. Lesson learned.Prepping the ground for the laying of the cement. Tyler loves helping his Dad.

The biggest truck Tyler has ever seen. As Tyler says, "Whoooooaaaaa!"

Eric worked very hard and made at least 7-8 trips with cement because the truck was too heavy to back up onto our grass.

Boys getting dirty.

One of our Friends, Braden came to help and realized that he would rather hire someone to do this in his backyard.

Eric is making grooves in the concrete to prevent cracks.
Gotta love this handyman!